Woke up this morning before dawn to witness a lightning storm in the distance outside the window. The foul weather continued for a while, with a fair amount of rain spattering the windows. Eventually the rain became a drizzle and the lightnings ceased. We got off the train and waited for a few minutes for our next one, luckily under the cover of the platform's cover, because a little rain continued to fall. This was at Hannover, from which we grabbed a train to a smaller stop called Hilversum, where we got our train to Amsterdam Central. There was an awesome map machine in the station, where you could put in a Hotel/Hostel or a street and it would print a map with directions. Sadly, our hostel was just off the maps edge! So we had to wing it, using the instructions from online that we still had, and took a bus. The rain was coming down on us fairly well by a California standard, so we broke out the rain gear. We checked-in, and were informed that the room wouldn't be ready until 2, so we put our bags into the baggage room and went back to the bus stop hoping our hour long bus ticket would still work, but after waiting twenty minutes decided it was too late and went across the street where we were perplexed by a menu. Luckily a friendly fellow customer explained to me what was going on with the Doner Kebabs and Turkish Pizzas. Both christian and I ended up getting Chicken Doner Kebabs (which happens to be what the helpful guy had gotten). They were surprisingly delicious and I don't know why they aren't popular in America, given what they are; a handful of greasy shredded meat and sauce with some letuce and that kind of thing.Then we came back to the Hostel and waited in the Lobby for the room to be ready.
Once we cleaned up we went out into Amsterdam to wander around. We got 48 hours of bus ticket, so that's helpful. The food in Amsterdam is really varied, there's lots of different regional food restaurants, like Thai, Indian, Mexican, Italian. The streets would have gotten me lost a lot, too, but there are these handy canals everywhere to use as landmarks.
I also had time to upload pictures from Vienna! So here you go:
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| A butterfly, as seen in the butterfly house |
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| I forget the name of this thing, but the other side was under construction so there weren't any good angles |
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| A nice grassy rest |
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